The New York City Opera logo. Fittingly, it's a big black hole.
New York City Opera musicians have been locked out, rehearsals have been cancelled and the the 2012 spring season may well be postponed.
Easy to understand the stand-off. The NYCO is millions of dollars in debt and had to pull out of its longterm home at Lincoln Center a couple of years ago.
Yet the unionized musicians are being asked to go from 22 weeks of guaranteed salaried work a year to no such guarantees, much less work, greatly reduced pay and a decidedly unrosy future for the company.
General Manager George Steel is at the center of the storm, being blamed not just for shoddy diplomatic skills when dealing with employees but for his programming of challenging new works that haven’t been able to build a wider audience for the strapped NYCO.
New York City Opera was built upon the discovery of new talents and countering the traditions of opera elsewhere. It must be horribly frustrating for everybody for the nearly 70-year-old company to lack the sort of patronage and foundational support needed to continue to blaze new trails.
This is one of the situations where all you can do is pray for people to understand each other’s difficulties.
I know it’s obvious, but the story’s like a Wagner opera, with the godly pronouncements from on high and the suffering among the people below.
The AP news story on the lockout is here.
Great commentary by Paul Pekonen from May 2011, on the NYCO financial struggle and how it mirrors that of fellow underdog New York institution The New York Mets, is here.